Still in Love with You
by OutOfTheConfinesOfFear
Summary: Kate and Castle broken and bleeding and still in love - Sneak Peek: "She's just going through the motions of living, for five weeks since he came but didn't come her heart has been beating, her lungs taking in air and throwing it out again."


Just a short little something that fell out of my head between Law assignments.

Disclaimer: Nope, no connection to the brilliant minds of Castle's creators.

Hope you enjoy!

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Kate's heart quickens at the sight of her own name. Hastily scrawled and slanting too far like an afterthought. Her keys drop of her fingertips and clang sharply on the floorboards, the rest of her mail follows suit, landing at odd angles and sliding away, unmissed and forgotten. Her focus narrows down to his pen strokes, the force of the K and the E that runs. No address, just her name. He was here. The paper rustles between her shaky fingertips and the letters begin to fuzz at the edges. She sucks a shaky breath through her clenched teeth and blinks away the tears before flipping the scrap of paper over in her hands. The air leaves her faster than it came and the tears fall unbidden then. They leak onto the paper and smudge the Rs together, dragging the curling end of the Y down to the jagged edges of the torn paper and she's falling. Her back hits the door and she slides down to the floor, crumpling the note against her chest as her body is shattered to pieces, wrecked with sobs and gasping for air. She curls in on herself and lays her head on the cold hardwood, trembling with the pain of missing him, of knowing he was so close but never came. She unfurls the crumpled paper, flattens it out in front of her and reads his words over and over.

_I'm Sorry._

Her hair is dampened with tears and sticking to the floor when she sleeps, broken and ruined at the front door because she's sorry too, but she doesn't blame him, they both ruined what they had.

She's just going through the motions of living, for five weeks since he came but didn't come her heart has been beating, her lungs taking in air and throwing it out again. She goes to work. She thinks she smiles at her new team but even so it must be broken and weary because they look at her with gentle eyes and try too hard. She avoids mirrors. She ignores the way her skin looks too thin, her collar bones too sharp, and her eyes too dark, exhausted and hopeless. She's going through the motions but everything just feels like tomorrows and yesterdays and every breath she takes stutters and every heartbeat feels slower to come than the last. Her body aches, her joints creak and every night she slinks home and crawls into a cold bed, too exhausted to do anything but fade to black. It's empty. Everything is empty.

She goes to New York, desperate and hurting. The silence of the plane leaves the apologies that her heart beats into her veins echoing in her ears and her body aches with the relief and fear of being so close. She understands then, why her name looked like that, like an afterthought. She understands when she scribbles his name the same way.

His doorman lights up, eyes shining and teeth showing when he says "Miss Kate, welcome home, we missed you!" His eyes cloud over and he bows his head when she chokes on a sob and shakes her head. She hands him the note, scrapes out a "For Rick" and leaves.

The doorman is shaky with grief and lost wonder when Rick comes home. His heart plummets and his throat clogs at the sight because he would know that look on a stranger; Edwardo's eyes are sunken but shimmering, like he was briefly touched by something precious but lost it all too quickly. She was here. Edwardo pushes a piece of glossy paper torn from an airplane magazine into his palm and whispers an "I'm sorry too, Mr Castle" before lowering his head. He doesn't speak, just clenches the paper tightly in his fist, his knuckles white around it by the time he enters the loft. He forgets to take his shoes off; just crawls into the unmade bed and wraps himself in the heavy blankets that smell of stale alcohol and sweat. His tongue tingles with the sharp tang of tears and he sleeps hours later with her words tangled through his fingers and pressing into his lips, the paper crinkling with each heavy breath.

_I'm sorry too. It's not your fault. _

It's been sixty three days. Sixty three days since she came but didn't come and he's heavy. His eyes ache, they droop at the edges and his lips curve down nowadays, cracked by the harsh winds and bleeding. His neck is knotted and his blood feels thick. He doesn't have words anymore, black letters just burn. He doesn't have words, or work, or her so he just walks. Every day he just wanders around being heavy. It's always aimless, circular mainly, ultimately looping back home. Each day has been the same, except today. Today he wanders onto a plane but it still feels similar, still feels likes wandering home. He's too tired to even feel pain at that thought; he's too exhausted to feel anything but the pull of sleep as he settles into the cramped little economy seat near the toilet.

It's been sixty three days. Sixty three days that she has been wearing herself down with the impossible task of being. She takes a strange kind of comfort in the thought that he really can't be doing any worse than her, which means he must be doing better and that's good, she hopes he is doing better than her. Maybe he smiles sometimes, she hopes so. It's been sixty three days and her bones are tired. The night is cold, and she misses the unrelenting hum of her old city. She hates the things she hears in the silence of the nights here. Her bag tugs painfully at her shoulder, her toes curl in protest at the bottom of her slanting shoes and her spine sags under the weight of it all in the chugging old elevator that smells like it was home to a wet dog for years. The doors slide open and she drags her feet two steps forward but freezes on the threshold, body tense and eyes closed. The elevator doors smacking into her shoulders and bouncing away jolts her into action and she stumbles off to the side, catches herself with her back against the wall.

His jacket is too big, the shoulder hangs. His pants are scrunched around the waist, held up by a too tight belt. His hair is too long; it's flopping over his forehead. His eyes are ringed black, he looks bruised and beaten and exactly how she feels. That's the thought that breaks her; he looks exactly how she feels. He's scruffy and unshaven and crumpled, sleeping at her door. She drops her bag and trips forward on buckling knees, hesitant to touch. She sees the crumpled receipt in his hand then, catches the end of her name peeking out next to his thumb and her heart shatters because she wouldn't have, she couldn't have, it would smashed her broken pieces to dust.

She kneels down next to him, curses her cracking bones and gently pulls the paper from his hand. He doesn't stir, his body is limp and heavy and she scrunches her nose when she sees that he still sleeps with his mouth wide open and this floor is filthy. Her hands are shaking as she smooths the receipt out with her thumbs. The tears lift and fall over her swollen eyelids when she finally makes out the scrawled words.

_I still love you_.

She stretches her body alongside his, lays her face down on the filthy carpet in line with his and pushes the hair out of his face. She runs her nails gently over his scalp, behind his ear and her fingers spark with the contact. She hiccups over a sob because she can't do this again, she won't be able to do it again. She watches as his eyes flutter open and then drop closed again as he hums at her touch, just like every other morning and her heart clenches because she knows he is still waking, that the focus will snap clear any moment and she will be hit with all the pain in his eyes. She can handle her own pain but having to witness his, that would take more strength than she has ever had.

His eyes flutter open again and she sees the moment of clarity, sees him see her and all the air rushes out of her at once. He breathes out her name and there at 4am, lying on the dirty carpet of her buildings stuffy hallway, she presses into him and whispers over his lips.

"I still love you".


End file.
